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Reaction, to what? It appears to me to be a perception. So the perception happens first, then the sensation happens as a reaction. This has the cart before the horse. Sounds more like a reflex than a sensation.

Incorrect. Perception is the organization, identification, and interpretation of sensory information (so a perception is therefore an organized and identified interpretation of some sensory information). Sensations are collected sensory information. Therefore, sensations happen first, followed by perceptions. Your contention that perceptions are first, followed by sensations, is completely backward, in other words. In short, what I said before is accurate; sensations are the reactions of sensory organs to stimuli they developed to detect.

Quote from: Olivianus

But wait. Just above you said that sensation was a reaction. So sensation is a reaction to a perception that produces another reaction called perception. This is very messy.

It's clear by now that your definitions are faulty, to say the least. Stimuli produces a sensation, which produces a perception. Or, to put it another way, perceptions are reactions to sensations, which are reactions to stimuli. Have I made this clear enough now?

Quote from: Olivianus

Re-typing the statement does not add meaning.

No kidding. However, given your apparent and repeated misunderstanding of what I am trying to say, restatements are unfortunately necessary.

Quote from: Olivianus

It appears we have an admission. So sensation is perception on your theory?

Hardly. It should have been clear from context that I was saying that detection and sensation were synonymous, while perception was something else.

Quote from: Olivianus

Again, you seem to be conflating. Seeing you have already conflated sensation with perception, I am not surprised to see you conflating perception with reflex.

Given that the last so-called "conflation" you accused me of was due to your misunderstanding, I think it is a fair statement that this one is as well. Perhaps you should stop trying to play word games with my statements in what has so far proven a futile effort to negate them without having to actually rebut them.

Quote from: Olivianus

Blanchard said that perception was an inference from sensation. One wonders then, if only a few sensations give perception instead of all 5 (If 5 really is the number). Moreover, how can perception exclude cognitive activity when the brain itself is the primary organ of the nervous system?

A sensation is not a sense. Sensations are produced by the senses. There are only five known senses, but each sense produces innumerable sensations. Many of those sensations are filtered out by the central nervous system; what is not filtered is used to produce perceptions. By the way, organisms which do not have brains (and therefore do not have cognitive ability) can still have perceptions based on sensations. In short, perception is not dependent on cognition (as I previously stated). It simply requires a central nervous system to respond to and filter sensations.

Quote from: Olivianus

We are not talking about other creatures. We are talking about humans. We are the only species with grammar books, and dictionaries. That was the hole in Empiricism that Alfred Russell Wallace could not ignore.

No, we're talking about sensation and perception, which are not limited to humans. The fact that humans have defined those terms linguistically doesn't have any real relevance, because sensation and perception would still happen in other species regardless of whether humans existed or not.

Quote from: Olivianus

I never said that beauty was an abstract idea. Triangularity is an abstract idea.

Triangles (and triangularity) are hardly abstract. We can concretely define triangularity whereas we cannot concretely define an abstract idea. Indeed, triangularity and other such geometric/mathematical concepts are a way to transcend language barriers, whereas abstract ideas are dependent on language and shared definitions.

Quote from: Olivianus

You are conflating an innate idea with an abstract idea. There is overlap between the two but they are not the same.

Not at all. The problem is that for an abstract idea to be universal, it must be innate. Yet an abstract idea is not innate, therefore it cannot be universal. That was my point.

Quote from: Olivianus

You are conflating a subject’s existence with its nature. Essence equals existence on your view, JUST LIKE THE ROMAN CATHOLIC DOCTRINE OF ABSOLUTE DIVINE SIMPLICITY! Oh thank you thank you thank you thank you thank you very much! See my recent thread on atheism and Rome.

Please, Olivianus. Given how frequently you've gotten things wrong, do you think this latest "gotcha" is actually going to be taken seriously? I never said anything at all about a thing's 'essence'. I don't even know what you mean by that. All I said was that you can't logically refute the fact that something exists, because its existence contradicts the refutation.

Quote from: Olivianus

You are again conflating the historical order with the logical order. In this chronological physical world, yes I am a subject inquiring into things with sounds and sights of words etc. But this issue pertains to the meaning of your theory in a logical order, in the realm of abstraction.

This is a nonsensical attempt by you to try to obfuscate things. The plain and simple fact is that logic has no independent existence. It is dependent on the "chronological physical world", as you put it. So is abstraction; abstract ideas do not exist in some separate realm besides the physical. Abstract ideas are created by minds which have developed enough to conceive of them, and without those minds (and the brains which produce those minds), they could not exist at all.

Quote from: Olivianus

You said, “Gill may have "proven" that language was impossible” (#64). Now you are changing your response that you reject Gill, and you do so only by assertion. This is shady behavior at best.

Given how you just attempted to quote-mine my statement to pretend I meant something other than what I actually did, it is utterly dishonest for you to try to accuse me of "shady behavior". My full statement was, "Gill may have "proven" that language was impossible, yet it clearly exists; we are using it to communicate with each other right now. If language was actually impossible, we would not be able to have this argument, therefore it clearly is possible." It should have been evident that I rejected Gill's statement from the get-go. If you took it some other way, then that suggests that you need to work on your ability to understand what I mean.

Quote from: Olivianus

But the theory states that coherency is the way to determine the truth of something. You are simply asserting that coherency theory is wrong. But that is my chosen theory.

But that is what coherency theory is!

In other words, it's circular logic. You are asserting that you can determine the truth of something with coherency theory. Yet that is the conclusion that you get from coherency theory. You are asserting the consequent because you cannot actually provide any means to verify that coherency theory itself is true, you can only rely on what coherency theory itself states.

Quote from: Olivianus

Which is premised on a conflation between the genus of being and the genus of epistemology; a conflation of the physical world with abstraction.

Given that there is no such difference, your point is invalid. Abstraction is produced by the physical world, the same as the mind is produced by the brain. Without the physical structure to support it, you cannot have a mind (or abstraction).

Quote from: Olivianus

I don’t believe that and neither did Plato.

The fact that Plato believed something doesn't make him right. And I've already shown that your belief is based on circular logic.

Quote from: Olivianus

That is ad hoc. That gives no explanation of how a Universal could exist to be conceived of to begin with and one wonders: who first communicated them?

Universal ideas (such as triangles/triangularity) are natural consequences of a universe with spatial dimensions. They exist because the universe, with its dimensions, exists. If the universe did not exist, then universal ideas would have no meaning. A triangle, for example, is meaningless if you cannot have straight lines and angles between those lines that add up to 180 degrees. And while this should not need to be said again...universal ideas are not abstract ones.

Quote from: Olivianus

Exactly! This is exactly why you cannot first affirm the conclusion and then validate the principles by the conclusion.

And science does not do that.

By the way, this is exactly what you're doing with coherence theory. You're affirming the conclusion that you can determine truth by showing coherence, then you're validating that affirmation by pointing to coherence theory.

Quote from: Olivianus

But the tests are never universal and thus can never justify a law.

Scientific laws are nothing more than mathematical expressions to begin with. Thermodynamics, motion, gravity, whatever, they're just mathematical expressions of how those forces work, as seen from the "inside" (that is, we're affected by them too). It's not perfect, but going into science expecting perfection is silly.

Quote from: Olivianus

It seems then the only escape for you is to say that the conclusion is not universal and thus not a law. Thus the idea of scientific law is smoke.

It seems that you don't understand what scientific laws are to begin with.

Quote from: Olivianus

By assertions and conflations which I have cataloged in detail for you.

Your catalog is of your misunderstandings and obfuscations, as I've shown.

Quote from: Olivianus

ASSERTION and a conflation between physical things and abstract objects.

This presupposes that abstractions have a separate existence from physicality. You must show evidence to support this, otherwise you are using circular logic to justify your position. And, by the way, not an assertion. It is based on the fact that you can't assert a conclusion and then validate the premise with that conclusion.

Quote from: Olivianus

You completely avoided the point that Kline proved that an operation was not truth.

As I am not talking about operations (that was your assertion, you never gave any evidence to show that it was the case), that doesn't matter.

Quote from: jaimehlers

In other words, circular logic, or as you're fond of putting it, affirming the consequent.

Quote from: Olivianus

Wrong. An axiom is not a conclusion. It is a posited assumption. A postulate.

As it happens to be the conclusion of coherence theory, you will have to excuse my skepticism as to your claim that it's nothing more than an axiom/postulate. Frankly, I don't buy it.

Quote from: Olivianus

Your accusation of circular logic is based on your conflation between a conclusion and an axiom.

Given that your 'axiom' happens to be the same as the conclusion of coherence theory...

Quote from: Olivianus

That is damning to your position.

Not at all. You can't simply say that something is an axiom and then expect everyone else to blithely accept it.

Quote from: jaimehlers

If you don't understand what I mean by the words I use, then ask, don't put forth a pompous statement such as "you could mean this thing, or you could mean that thing, or some other thing, and I can't be sure which you mean, so I don't accept your statement". That calls your whole argument into question, because if you can't tell what I mean by my use of some word, then it suggests you may have the same difficulties understanding the words of others, and thus you might have come to an incorrect conclusion because of that inability to parse the definitions properly.

Quote from: Olivianus

You clearly operate off of the historical order theory of demonstration, so why you would try to avoid it, I will leave for you to admit.